Money and Happiness: Extended Evidence Against Satiation

Sometimes I wonder if it's the money per se, or what brings in the money, or both. My guess is the higher-paying jobs are more interesting and fulfilling; conversely if two people have equally stressful jobs, but one pays a lot and the other little, the high pay would mitigate against the stress ("this has these costs but at least it pays well").

This sounds obvious maybe but it's a bit different from money per se bringing happiness. It would be more about the perception of the work.

I also am not sure what to make of life satisfaction as a happiness indicator. It's a single item reflecting one aspect of happiness; there's other components of well-being. The author acknowledges this but it feels like a critical issue.

In my opinion, this research is very biased: Looking at the first 5 questions [1] I see a materialistic context that channels the answer towards a materialistic view of happiness, where of course money is key.

Now, let's take the Aristotelian definition of happiness: It is about doing good and matching one's nature with one's actions. Then I would design questions like:

- Do you feel that your life is interconnected with the lives of others?

- When you reflect, do you feel that your life is what it should be?

- Are you satisfied with your life?

- In your daily life you do things out of obligation that do not correspond to your true nature?

- etc.

It all depends on what definition of happiness you take, and the one selected by the sponsors of the work I guess is not mine.

[1]Source: https://go.trackyourhappiness.org/

- In most respects, my life is close to my ideal.

- The conditions of my life are excellent.

- I am satisfied with my life.

- So far I have achieved the important things I want in life.

- If I could live my life over again, I would change almost nothing.

Note that correlation is logarithmic, meaning that for a linear increase in happiness one needs exponentially more money. Fig. 1 in the article is a semi-log plot with a log plot of income vs (linear) life satisfaction.

I suspect this study is confirming a result that's already well known because I've heard this result before (linear happiness scales for an exponential increase in wealth).

It's very complex and depends on everyone's life situation, I've had money issues in the past, I was stressed but at that time I had many friends and family close which made things ok. Now I am more successful and live abroad, but loneliness kills me, even though I have everything I dreamed of, I think back at the times I was "poor" and I was happier. I also tend to compare myself more with my successful friends and that makes me also a bit jealous. I don't think money will make you happy because there is always someone who has more and there will be always be better things you can't afford. Also we get used to everything fast, you will get used to your "Ferraris" at some point.. What makes you happy is having nice people you love around you and finding a purpose in life.

I remember my colleague from work who said that happiness is linear to amount of money. The more money the more you have vacations, houses, cars. Such view-point is very narrow and materialistic, but some people do think that way.

I remember comparing this to having toilets in work. You will be happy with having at least one in your office. It will be good to have two toilets and it will bring more happiness, but what about having 10 toilets? It will not linearly provide more happiness to the office.

It is good to have enough money to be able to live a convenient life. The rest is up to you. To your goals. To your motivations. Some people will never be satisfied just by having a big pile of cash only.

If you play a game with infinite ammo, infinite health it becomes boring quite easily.

I’m somewhat sceptical about this result, and the way it’s presented. Plotting income on a log scale obscures the fundamental point here, which is that each additional dollar matters less and less as you have more and more. And even if the line does keep going up against log income, this might be a US-specific thing.

The high net worth groups used for comparison were not asked the same questions ("nearly identical" is in the eye of the beholder) and were either international or from 1983(!?), so I think this whole exercise is a little dubious. Not saying the conclusion is right or wrong, just that I don't think this evidence is compelling.

This actually gets to my gripe with a lot of meta studies, where authors often yada yada pretty significant methodological differences in the name of increasing the sample size.

Matt Levine gave his opinion on this today (perhaps that's why it was posted here?).

The major flaw in the study is that the HNWI survey was made in 1985, fourty years ago. Lifestyle and social behavior is much different now.

These studies never seem to address the "keeping up with the Jones" factor, or more broadly, that social opinions shape how much we care about money. I think a lot of people would be near "maximum happy levels" [1.] with very little money, but are indirectly socially pressured into needing more money in order to buy more stuff. A few centuries ago, it was normal for kids to have only a few toys, adults to have a few dozen books, at most, and this was typical. I don't think kids then were less happy because they didn't have modern consumer abundance.

Today, the social expectations on say, eating out at restaurants frequently, traveling for vacation, and so on are expensive, and to be a deliberately frugal person living in an urban area requires a lot of discipline and asocial behavior that wasn't necessary before.

It would be interesting to do a study like this that selected people who care less about money, or at least cared less about the social expectations of money – and then see what an extra $500 or $5,000 would do.

1. Assuming their basic needs like food, shelter, clothing, parks, etc. are met with a decent level of quality.

this seems to be "people who have to work are less happy than people who are free to do what ever they want whenever they want"

This reminds me of the time I went to an all inclusive resort. It was fun in the short therm. Just ended up walking around buzzed the entire day / vacation.

If you have an unlimited supply of something, then all your vices could be fuelled. And if that happens then are you strong enough to resist temptation. And if not, then you happiness will probably decrease.

Wealth != income

> The results suggest that the positive association between money and happiness continues far up the economic ladder, and that the magnitude of the differences can be substantial.

Sometimes I wonder if the folk wisdom that "money doesn't buy happiness" is an attempt by the poor to make themselves feel better about their own life situations.

What if the cause is the other way around? What if people who are happy are more likely to earn more? I mean, can you imagine working for someone who is gloomy and depressed?

I know plenty of unhappy people with lots of money. I know plenty of happy people with very little money. Are they all outliers ?

What is this? Is it a preprint or a peer-reviewed article? A blog?

Life has taught me that money is the most important thing there is.

I don't understand how people could say that health is more important.

What's the point of being healthy if you don't have money? You have to spend your entire life being a slave doing stuff you hate... Why bother existing? In that case, good health feels more like a curse.

Family is more important? If you don't have money in this day and age, you can kiss your whole family goodbye... If you even managed to assemble one in the first place... Love doesn't matter when there is no money. There's no energy to engage in such abstractions.

God is more important than money? Then give me all your money. See how fast your god turns against you. About as fast as your faith evaporates.

Without money, the best you can do, the best you can be, just ain't good enough.

Some people will say that money is not the only measure of success... Yeah sure, if you can live in a forest with no money and convince a partner to live there with you, that would be success. But good luck.

This could just measure whether people with money feel more of a need to persuade themselves their life is a success.

It's true that beyond a certain point you can buy what everyone wants, which is freedom - from capitalism.

But there is ample evidence from the news of extremely high net worth people acting in ways that are petulant, destructive to self and others, and don't suggest happiness at all.

Now the real question is, how could people be happy before the invention of the monetary system?

Is https://www.trackyourhappiness.org/ down for anyone else or is it just me?

My absolutely non-scientific gut feeling is that if billionaires were not as influential and carried as much weight as they do in media, that we would be able to assess them as mentally disturbed in no way different to Plyushkin's disorder or some strain of sociopathic behaviour.

From a game theory stand point a billionaire won. Carve your name in history, you can choose to influence politics for the good, pour money into hard research problems in Healthcare, Environment, Energy. Go Genghis Khan and have a thousand children. They could do literally anything and yet choose to continue to increase value for shareholders and themselves, it seems illogical.

From the article:

> As the figure shows, the wealthy individuals are considerably happier than the high earners in the income group.

Absolutely, 100%. Money has made me very happy. Once I saved up enough money from a high-paying job, I was able to quit and do whatever I liked. And I love every minute of it now. No 9-5, no wasting time doing things I don't want to do.

The more money you have, the less you have to waste your precious finite time doing shit you don't want to do. Money allows you to pursue your hobbies, travel, and just have time to appreciate life.

It does take less than people think. You just need enough to buy a cheap house in the middle of nowhere, an ability to give up some luxuries (big city life if you like that, new stuff all the time), and the intelligence to set up a few sources of relatively passive income and/or set up a way to make a little money from hobbies in a surfer-like part-time fashion.

"happiness science" that does not respect user setting for dark mode + having sticky banner on top is too much, way too much to take seriously